Performance Study on Methanol Steam Reforming Rib Micro-Reactor with Waste Heat Recovery

Guoqiang Wang, Feng Wang and Bohong Chen
Additional contact information
Guoqiang Wang: Key Laboratory of Low-grade Energy Utilization Technologies and Systems, Chongqing University, Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400044, China
Feng Wang: Key Laboratory of Low-grade Energy Utilization Technologies and Systems, Chongqing University, Ministry of Education, Chongqing 400044, China
Bohong Chen: School of Energy and Power Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400030, China

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 7, 1-18

Abstract: Automobile exhaust heat recovery is considered to be an effective means to enhance fuel utilization. The catalytic production of hydrogen by methanol steam reforming is an attractive option for onboard mobile applications, due to its many advantages. However, the reformers of conventional packed bed type suffer from axial temperature gradients and cold spots resulting from severe limitations of mass and heat transfer. These disadvantages limit reformers to a low efficiency of catalyst utilization. A novel rib microreactor was designed for the hydrogen production from methanol steam reforming heated by automobile exhaust, and the effect of inlet exhaust and methanol steam on reactor performance was numerically analyzed in detail, with computational fluid dynamics. The results showed that the best operating parameters were the counter flow, water-to-alcohol (W/A) of 1.3, exhaust inlet velocity of 1.1 m/s, and exhaust inlet temperature of 773 K, when the inlet velocity and inlet temperature of the reactant were 0.1 m/s and 493 K, respectively. At this condition, a methanol conversion of 99.4% and thermal efficiency of 28% were achieved, together with a hydrogen content of 69.6%.

Keywords: methanol steam reforming; hydrogen production; exhaust waste heat; rib microreactor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/7/1564/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/7/1564/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:7:p:1564-:d:338022

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().